


ástron

by ghostwit



Category: One Piece
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I have no good tags :P sorry these are weird, Post-Marineford, not a bad end per se but an unhappy one, possessive behavior but in that grieving way y'know, sometimes things don't work out and it's just. not fun and sad and gross and messy you know.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:41:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26710852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostwit/pseuds/ghostwit
Summary: Or: Marco fucks up.(And I am still not getting what I want. I want to touch the back of your right arm.)(Alt. ending ofnautis.)
Relationships: Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco & Masked Deuce, Masked Deuce & Portgas D. Ace
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	ástron

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [nautis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26412730) by [ghostwit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostwit/pseuds/ghostwit). 



> Me, writing a divergent timeline for my multichap before I even finish it? haha.

Separate stars on either end of the same brilliant constellation, Marco pivots around Deuce with a normative sense of grace; I should, I do. A single clean stroke (bloody, raw and tearing at the edges, twisted viscera and skin that hisses and bubbles) and the sky crumples in on itself, colliding in hard, brittle angles. 

(Or maybe, maybe opening up. Empty space. Void.)

“Do you want to--” he says, head cocked again, unbearably, irritatingly vulnerable. He’s half-leaning, one foot propped up on the Striker and rope coiled lazily in his hands, wrists upturned (offering, offering), but the posture lacks the usual fluidity, the complete ease in his own skin that Marco exhibits. 

_ No. Never. I don’t ever want to. _ “Yes.” Deuce mutters, helping himself to his feet, fingers tingling. Marco smiles at him, head cocked until it goes limp to rest on his shoulder, smile curled at the edges like the twist of a bread tie, casualty gone frail. Deuce steps beside him, the boat dipping with their combined weight, the lurch of it spinning nausea in his gut. 

“Do you want to sit?” And Deuce’s brow lifts, lip raising in a confused sneer-- _ Yeah, if he wants his skin to. Oh.  _ Marco’s smile takes on genuine mirth as the realization clicks, but it just hollows Deuce further, another reminder of the gaping void spanning his shoulders, full of things impossible and lost. He sits without preamble, curls his hands around the edge of the wood and runs a thumb over the varnish, looking to soothe himself in the slide of it.

The vacuum of space in Striker’s belly,  _ hishishistheirs,  _ skin prickling like it’s been scrubbed raw, nerves alight with sensation. Cleansing, maybe, in some other time, like the first freeing nip of winter that sends you giddy, but there’s too much sunlight baked into the leather of his skin now, too many warm hands and easy smiles pressed in sly kisses to the backs of his palms, and he’s stripping it clean and sloughing it off. It’s selfish, to want to keep the things he does not deserve, keep the graces he’d never earned, but selfish he’ll be. 

He’s crying, he’s crying loud and messy and the scream of the engine winds to a quiet whirr before fading to nothing at all, to open wind and nauseatingly sloshing water,  _ “Stop!” _

And Marco is crouching before him, palms  _ up  _ and full lip sucked into his mouth, eyebrows knit, “I didn’t mean to.” Marco gasps, words falling out of his mouth like lost teeth. He reaches for Deuce and he can only recoil, recoil further into himself with the flaps of his coat wrapped about him, wait until his core cranks heat into the void the phoenix fire has opened somewhere--everywhere,  _ god, everywhere _ \--in him. 

“Deuce,” A hand on his shoulder, snot in the lining of his coat that smears his chin, the bridge of his nose, his cheek, as he nods in reply. Nods, nods, nods, trying to let the anger at the fact  _ he _ is reassuring  _ former first division commander, Marco the Phoenix,  _ warm him, bring the sensation back to his fingertips. To chase the healing lick of fire from his interstices. 

“I’m  _ sorry _ ,” Marco offers, an offer he can’t take when he’s still buried in the dark of his coat with Marco’s talons cinching the fabric around the curve between his neck and shoulder, just nodding in a pale affirmation, teeth grit. “I’m, I’m going to, uh,” Marco’s fingers flex, grounding pressure in a way that makes Deuce shudder involuntarily, stomach churning. “Stay here, don’t worry-yoi, I, ah, won’t do that again, I promise.” every word is punctuated by the tacky noise of Marco’s tongue lifting dry from his hard palate, fingers twitching around Deuce’s collar and he cries, shuddering beneath the cloth, hard and silent. 

“I’m going to let go now,” and, because he always knows, somehow, even watching Deuce shake apart into himself with wide eyes and trembling hands, “I’m not going anywhere, I promise, I’ll be right here-yoi.” 

The click of talon as they hook against the side of the boat, a gust of wind that makes Deuce’s jaw shudder, snot drying around the rims of his mouth and hanging loose off his cheeks, the choppy slide of Striker as it cuts the waves perpendicularly, a constant lift and drop and lift and drop on the water in time with his heaving chest. The distinct, peculiar loneliness that dances in his throat, shredding it raw.  


Deuce doesn’t move, doesn’t watch--in his mind’s eye, Marco’s gaze is trained down at his fingers, deft as he maneuvers between each twitch, and it makes him want to laugh, laugh himself hoarse and limp and broken--keeps his fingers spread over the knobs of his elbows where they rest on his knees. His body is drained, leaking empty and begging more, and so he trembles in place, tears drying cold on his cheek and skin burning in absence of sensation. The longer he sits, the more he doesn't mind, skin calcifying and leather stiffening with sea salt. Don't move, don't watch.  


Marco who waits outside with calloused thumbs that would press like--petals, maybe, or like nothing else at all, just another man’s hands, the same that had nestled against his shoulder--against his cheekbones, Marco who would let him blow his nose messy in the fabric of his shirt and let the snot dry in a messy constellation across his stomach just as easily as he would take the vitriol burning a hole through the center of his tongue like a hot coal. 

“Marco,” Deuce says, muffled in his shielding. “Leave,  _ please _ .”

Rope, at the very least, Marco knows intimately, even when Deuce’s swampy fragility unmoors him, a grace to muscle memory he can only muster when he closes his eyes and tilts his head back, like a child seeking rain, tying the Striker to the dock in a few smooth rolls of the wrist after hauling her the distance back to the shore. 

For the briefest of seconds, something in Marco lights in anger, annoyance, and he stiffens, repressing the urge to drive a talon right through the body of the boat. 

“I’ll listen to you,” Marco swallows, instead, hands rolling into themselves with a force that makes his knuckles crack to keep them from echoing with the sensation of Deuce’s trembling body beneath them, “and I won’t ask anything of you.” 

“But, this--this isn’t something you run from-yoi. Why do you think I…?” he shakes his head,  _ came here _ ,  _ came to you _ ,  _ offered _ , words stretched too thin in the chasm between them, wooden slats too widely spaced to let tiny, tiny men bridge the gap between dying stars. Marco won’t ask Deuce to understand him, and Deuce lets out a frustrated scream into his forearms. 

Too fast, too hard, too much when he’s been scrubbed so thoroughly clean that it feels like Marco’s words are trampling the pulsating edges of his soul. 

_“_ _ Go! _ _”_

He should, and so Marco does. 

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this because I feel like I write Marco a little too infallible (perhaps because I am in love with him teehee <3), but really, he's just as annoyingly human as the rest of us, eh? But I also separated it from the main fic because I didn't want to do that to either of them jdhgyft love prevails despite flaw xoxo @ marco I am single
> 
> I also found myself really liking writing Deuce, esp. after reading novel A, he's got this sort of immaturity to him that's just really refreshing. I hope you enjoy... The longer I look at this piece the more I don't like it shdgthj so maybe one of you will find some value in it =_=;;
> 
> hazeism.tumblr.com


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